


gimme three steps toward the door (and you'll never see me no more)

by BlackVultures



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Title: Angus MacGyver's Adventures in Dating, F/M, First Kiss, Gift Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-02 14:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17265632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackVultures/pseuds/BlackVultures
Summary: Five times Mac went on weird dates, and one time it went right. (A gift fic forlavendersblueswho loved this idea and inspired me to actually write it. References her Ranch verse (which you should definitely read that because it's amazing).





	gimme three steps toward the door (and you'll never see me no more)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lavendersblues (lonely_lovebird)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_lovebird/gifts).



> If you're like me, every once in a while you join a new fandom, and if you're extremely lucky, there are people waiting to welcome you into it with open arms. With the MacGyver fandom, the first person I talked to was [lavendersblues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_lovebird/pseuds/lavendersblues), and she made me feel right at home. Lavender is a total sweetheart who betas all my MacDalton fics (except this one, haha) and she's an incredibly talented writer in her own right, so if you haven't read her fics you need to go do that RIGHT NOW and then come back to this one! Big shout out to [KatieComma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieComma/works) aka TellTaleClerk for beta reading this so I could keep it a surprise! Her stuff is really good too, so you should go read THAT now and THEN come back to this fic! Don't worry, I'll still be here. ;)
> 
> Title is from "Gimme Three Steps" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, a band whose politics I detest but they made some pretty banging music (and I have no doubt Jack knows this song by heart).

**1 - Nikki**

 

Mac never thought he’d be disposing of a dead body on a first date—but then again, he’d never gone a date with a girl quite like Nikki Carpenter.

She was blond like him, and shorter than average like him, but that was where the similarities ended. Nikki was fierce in a teeth-gritted, mad-at-the-world way that Mac both admired and dreaded, because unlike Jack—who could be hot-headed but knew when to back off or risk making matters abysmally worse—she had a tendency to shoot first, take prisoners, and cause mayhem.

“Explain to me again why you killed this guy?” Mac asked in a whisper, grunting as he hefted the dead body’s legs into his arms. The victim had been the chef at the bougie Italian restaurant they’d spent all of forty minutes in before Nikki had throat-chopped the chef when he came out to check on their meal. “Because, no offense, but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind for our date.”

With her hands under the chef’s armpits, Nikki flashed Mac a grin, teeth white even in the gloom of the alleyway. “Sorry, handsome, but when I happen across a fugitive mafia boss, work comes first. Business before pleasure and all that.” They stumbled the body over to a dumpster, and Nikki propped the lid open with her elbow so they could toss him inside. “Since you’re so disappointed, though, I’d like to know what _exactly_ you had in mind for this date.”

Mac made sure the dumpster lid was secure, and when he turned around Nikki was much closer to him than she was a second ago, blinking up at him demurely and smelling like peonies. The rational thought that Mac so often clung to went out the window in favor of blushing and stammering. “Uh… well, now that you ask it doesn’t sound that great…”

“Oh?” Nikki said, dragging the single syllable out like a piece of taffy. Her hands slid up his chest, nails scraping the fine material of his dress shirt. She leaned up on her toes, and Mac’s hands automatically went to her waist to steady her balance. Her ruby-red lips were an inch from his own. “Are you sure about that?”

She leaned in before he could answer, because he wasn’t supposed to. Mac saw himself reflected in her eyes, and his last thought before she kissed him was that it was like looking in a mirror.

 

~***~

 

**2 – Patton**

If Nikki had liked Mac for his looks, then Patton liked Mac for his brains.

Dr. Patton Schaffer was a diminutive slip of a man who could usually be found in a lab coat or protective suit, and he had a tendency to push his thick glasses up his nose when he was nervous. When he wasn’t training or on a mission, Mac spent a lot of time in the Phoenix Foundation’s R&D department, and Patton was the lead gadget-tester. He and Patton got to chatting about something Mac threw together in the field—the one that Jack told _literally everyone_ he could about as soon as they got back from the Maldives—and the next thing Mac knew, they were having dinner at a shitty 24-hour diner in Pasadena.

And Mac was doing his damnedest not to fall asleep in his soup.

Patton was polite and sweet, going as far as to pull out Mac’s chair when he arrived, which he thought was over-the-top considering the venue, but he appreciated the gesture. They’d made small talk while perusing the menu and by the time their food arrived Mac thought he’d accidentally swallowed Bozer’s Ambien before he left the house, because there was no way this conversation could actually be this _boring_.

Wait… was this what it was like talking to _Mac_? He knew sometimes he could get carried away, but there was only so much talk of _thermonuclear dynamics_ and _you went to Chernobyl once, right MacGyver?_ That must’ve been _so fascinating_ , seeing all that _devastation_ up close—had he gotten a chance to take any _samples_?

 _No, I was too busy trying not to die_ , Mac thought, the snarky tone he usually reserved for bickering with Jack making a surprise appearance in his head. _Didn’t have time to scrape up pieces of fissionable material._

“What I _really_ don’t understand,” Patton said, taking a delicate sip of his watered-down coffee, “is how someone as brilliant as you wound up partnered with that ridiculous Dalton oaf.”

“Bathroom,” Mac declared—maybe a bit too loudly based on the way several other diners glanced his way. He pushed himself back from the table and resisted the urge to flip his extremely hot soup bowl into Patton’s face. “I have to go to the bathroom.” He tried on his sunniest smile and hoped it wasn’t too much of a grimace. “Be right back.”

He speed-walked to the back of the diner, glanced back once to make sure Patton was distracted by his phone before bypassing the bathrooms completely and heading out the back door.

Needless to say, Mac didn’t spend nearly as much time in the R&D lab after that.

 

~***~

 

**3 – Elsa**

 

Elsa Ivanova was the first woman Mac had agreed to go on a date with after Nikki’s betrayal for two reasons: one, she was the opposite of Nikki in every way, and two, he was a little afraid of what would happen if he said no.

It was Bozer’s idea to try a dating app, and although Mac was reluctant—he’d lived through Jack’s experience on Tinder, if barely—it seemed harmless, and if it got Bozer out of his hair about becoming a monk he was all for it. Elsa wasn’t the first person Mac matched with, but she was the only one who sparked his interest beyond casual conversation. When she told him she was a world champion female bodybuilder, he was sold on meeting up for drinks and bowling (so he had a little bit of a strength kink—sue him).

And everything was fine, up to the point where Elsa bench-pressed him.

When she’d first walked into the bowling alley, Mac had done a double-take. The pictures on her Tinder profile didn’t do her justice: at six-foot-five and an amount of pounds that Mac was not suicidal enough to ask about, Elsa was built like a tank. A really beautiful tank, with a high auburn ponytail and combat boots the size of microwaves. The thought that she would use him to show off to a bunch of strangers hadn’t crossed his mind.

They had a couple beers, and somehow the conversation turned to Elsa’s many bodybuilding and weightlifting championships. Mac wasn’t entirely sure how she wound up lifting him over her head like he weighed nothing—his Russian was sketchy on a good day, and Elsa’s English left something to be desired—but he was okay with it until some drunk guy decided to play hero and tackled Elsa around the waist.

Mac was still over her head at this point, and the next thing he knew he was tumbling through the air and crashing into the mirror by the shoe rental counter. The drunk guy and Elsa, meanwhile, were rolling around on the boomerang-patterned carpet like a couple of rabid cats, and everyone else in the place was involved in some kind of fisticuffs.

Mac debated trying to get control of the situation, probably using a nearby fire extinguisher and some creative language. Before he could push himself up off the floor, the shoe rental guy decided to try and beat him to death with a men’s size eleven that looked like it was made before Mac was born. Everything was kind of a blur after that, but oh _boy_ was Matty pissed when she found out.

No more Tinder.

 

~***~

 

**4 – Nasha**

 

Nasha…

She was still hard to think about, even though it was Mac who’d cut her loose for her own safety. He had no doubt he could’ve done the long-distance thing, at least for a while, but once Murdoc got his claws into her, Mac couldn’t justify putting her in danger for the sake of his own feelings. Throw that in with the whole mess with James, and Mac’s emotional well was running a bit dry. As much as it had hurt to leave Jack and the others behind after his father dropped the Oversight bomb, Mac had known he’d had to get away before he turned into a bomb himself.

Nasha had defused him, as cliché as it sounded. She wasn’t associated with anything back at home, and her way of life and the culture of her people was so removed from Mac’s own that it was literally a breath of fresh air. It didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous, all smooth skin and those eyes, so dark and expressive.

But at the end of the day, even if Murdoc hadn’t kidnapped her, Mac knew he and Nasha would’ve parted ways eventually. They wanted different things—another cliché—and as much as he resented it sometimes, Mac’s life was in America, and he wasn’t going to be satisfied building water purifiers for the rest of his life, especially when he could teach the villagers to do it themselves.

Plus he’d missed Jack like a lost limb; a throbbing pain that was ever-present in his chest the whole time Mac was in Africa. It was part of the reason why he hadn’t replied to any of Jack’s texts or calls; the implication of what that fist-around-his-heart sensation meant would take a while to unpack, and he wasn’t going to burden Nasha with that.

Nasha wanted a partner—but Mac wasn’t it, because he already had one.

 

~***~

 

**5 - Nick**

 

… Maybe Mac re-downloaded Tinder about a year after The Elsa Incident, and maybe he did it on a phone that he bought specifically so Matty couldn’t spy on him.

And maybe he matched with a ridiculously good-looking guy who bore a vague resemblance to Jack in the pictures on his Tinder profile.

Jack was sleeping on Mac’s couch due to a potential rat-involved plague at his apartment building (seriously) and seeing his partner sleepy and shirtless every morning was starting to drive Mac up the wall. And _maybe_ Mac agreed to meet said guy who bore a vague resemblance to Jack for lunch at a mid-priced restaurant in Las Vegas one Saturday.

And luckily, because Mac _despised_ driving, Leanna was willing to make the trip with him; there was a designer purse she’d been eyeballing for a long time and apparently some fancy store on the Strip was having a sale. Mac didn’t pry for details, and thankfully, neither did Leanna. She dropped him off outside the address Nick sent him—a little hole-in-the-wall type burger place that was practically in the suburbs—and sped away after Mac assured he’d text her when he was ready to go (or, you know, if he decided to stay longer).

Mac found Nick Stokes seated in a back booth in the restaurant, and for a split second he thought he was the victim of the weirdest catfish of all time—in person, the similarities between Nick and Jack were uncanny, but the longer Mac looked, the more he saw the differences. Not just in how they kept their hair or their clothes, but that Nick was missing some of Jack’s harshness; with his job as a crime scene investigator Mac was sure he’d seen his fair share of shit, yet he had a lighter quality around the edges that Jack lacked.

Mac wanted to pretend that he didn’t know why he kept thinking of Jack while he was on dates, but he wasn’t that good at fooling himself.

“You going to stand there all day?” Nick asked, breaking Mac out of his musings—and bringing forth the awkward realization that he’d been lurking a few feet from the table for at least five minutes. “Jeez, am I that intimidating?”

“What? No,” Mac said, sliding into the booth across from Nick and definitely not focusing on how even the man’s _voice_ sounded similar to Jack’s, the Texas in his words barely noticeable unless you knew what to listen for. God, Mac felt pathetic. “You just remind me of somebody, that’s all.”

Nick’s eyebrows ticked up as he took a sip of his coffee. “Somebody good, I hope?”

Mac smiled before he could catch himself, the thought of Jack enough to activate the reflex. “Yeah, no worries there.”

They started chatting as the waitress came over to take Mac’s order, and he was pleasantly surprised to find that talking with Nick was as easy in person as it had been online, which was definitely not always the case. When the conversation turned to work, Mac used the usual think-tank cover story but he could sense Nick wasn’t buying it. All in all, though, it was a fantastic turnaround from Mac’s other ventures into the dating world since Nikki, and even if it didn’t go anywhere he was happy he showed up.

After Nick paid the check—at his insistence that his mother _and_ his aunt would kill him if he didn’t—he set down his mug and sighed. “Look, Mac, I’m afraid I haven’t been totally honest with you.”

Mac groaned, letting his head _thunk_ back against the top of the booth. “You’re not kidnapping me, right? Because three people have tried that, and I’m kind of getting sick of stabbing them.”

That startled a laugh out of Nick, and he shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Jesus, what kind of dates are you going on?” He glanced off to the side, clearly choosing his words carefully before he spoke. “I might’ve swiped right on you because I recognized you from somewhere else—a picture my aunt sent me that she got from my cousin, Jack.”

Mac froze, shock making him blink rapidly. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“If you think I’m saying that Jack Dalton’s my cousin, then yeah,” Nick replied, as calmly as if he were discussing the weather. His tone turned apologetic: “I’m sorry if I led you on, but Jacky’s always talking about you to the family, and it’s pretty obvious to anyone with a working pair of ears that he’s got feelings for you, so I wanted to make sure you were on the up and up.”

Yeah, that “working pair of ears” thing? Mac was pretty sure his were malfunctioning. He laughed a little, but it came out more like a croak. “You think… no, man, Jack doesn’t think of me like that.”

Nick’s lips twitched into a smile. “Pretty sure he does, since my aunt told my mom he sounds the exact same way I did when I first got together with Greg.” There was a buzzing sound, and Nick checked his phone; whatever he saw made him sober immediately. “Damn, I have to get to work. Look, I forwarded you a couple of the emails he sent back to the family—if you don’t believe me, give them a read and judge for yourself.” He got up to leave and clapped Mac on the shoulder on his way by. “Hope I see you down at the ranch sometime.”

 

~***~

 

**+1 – Jack**

 

When Leanna dropped Mac off after the long drive back from Vegas it was late, so he was surprised to find that not only was Jack still awake, but he’d cooked dinner. Steak with grilled asparagus and tomatoes waited in the microwave, and Mac didn’t have to hunt in his chronically messy fridge to find a beer—the last one had been moved to the front, just for him.

Plate and bottle in hand, he kicked off his boots and padded out to the deck, where Jack sat by a low fire watching the city lights. When he saw Mac he raised his own beer in greeting and said, “I’m sorry.”

Mac feigned heart failure until Jack made a face at him. “For what? Cooking me dinner?” He sat down, close to Jack but as close as he wanted to. “Confronting that science experiment on the bottom shelf to get me the last beer?”

“No, for driving you crazy the past couple days. You’ve been real nice about it, but contrary to popular belief I know when I’m being a pain in the ass.” Jack took a final swig off his beer before setting down the empty bottle with a decisive _clink_. He stared resolutely ahead at Los Angeles, not so much as glancing in Mac’s direction. “Thing is, you deserve to know why I’ve been a dick, and it’s got shit-all to do with the rats in my apartment.”

Mac swallowed a bite of steak—done to perfection, as usual—and got the sense this was a much more serious conversation than he’d anticipated. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Jack must’ve heard the worry in his voice, because he looked at him and waved off the concern. “Nah, it’s nothing like that.” He made a hollow sound and rubbed a hand over his face, gaze turning to the fire as he debated what to say. “I’ve written to my family about you, Mac.”

For the second time in a handful of hours Mac felt himself go completely still with surprise, although probably not the kind of surprise Jack expected. _Damn it, Nick_. “What? Why?”

“I’d like to say I don’t know, but I’d be lying to you and I hate doing that. Plus you never buy it anyway.” Slowly, telegraphing his movements, Jack slid closer to Mac and plucked the plate out of his lap and the fork from his hand. “Last thing I need is you stabbing me if I’m wrong about this.” Jack smiled, but it was a brittle and slightly fearful expression. “I’ve heard what happens on your other dates.”

“Oh my God,” Mac said, equal parts lamenting time (not to mention money and dignity) wasted and pissed that Nick was right. “I’m an _idiot_.”

He grabbed Jack by the front of his _Ride the Lightning_ shirt and pulled him in for a slightly uncoordinated kiss, and when Jack didn’t respond right away Mac was terrified that he’d somehow completely misread the situation. He started to lean away, and Jack grabbed his shoulders like a drowning man and slid his tongue past Mac’s lips in a way that would’ve made his knees weak if he were standing.

When they parted for air a moment later, Mac let out a trembling laugh as a perfect idea struck him. “We need to go to dinner in Vegas next weekend.” Jack shot him a quizzical look, and Mac bumped his jaw with his nose affectionately. “Don’t ask me why—it’s a surprise.”

Jack pulled him closer and squeezed him tight. “It’s a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> Liked this fic? Well, I wrote a book! Search for "Stitches Samantha Simard" on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) or Barnes & Noble (paperback or hardcover) and pick up a copy of my debut LGBT mystery novel! My Tumblr is thesammykinz.tumblr.com if you want to keep up with me! :)


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